The five bomb groups coming behind them, the 94th, the 385th, the 95th, the 100th, and the 390th, all fell into line behind the 388th. As the formations began to diverge, the umbrella barrage intensified, and 88-millimeter cannon rounds began to find their mark.
Wolf Pack, flown by Lieutenant Eddy Wick, had already lost one engine, and he was trying to keep up on the remaining three when a flak burst exploded beneath them, knocking out a second engine. Out of control, the plane began flying straight up in the air for several agonizing moments before falling away.
Eddy Wick was trying to regain control of the Fortress when its right wing was blown off by another shell burst. Ralph Jarrendt’s crew saw five chutes open before it disappeared through the clouds.
As Gremlin Gus II neared what Henry Dick hoped was the bomb release point, the cloud cover again thinned long enough for him to see that they were already past the target area. It was too late to release the bombs.
Now that he was sure he knew where they were, he requested that he be allowed to make another run on the target. Ralph Jarrendt passed the request along to the 388th group leader, Major Satterwhite, who was riding in the copilot’s seat. By then, the 96th and the 388th were widely separated. Satterwhite rejected the request for a second bomb run and ordered Jarrendt to rejoin the 96th.
Flying behind Jarrendt in Slightly Dangerous II, the Greek was getting increasingly frustrated. When were they going to drop? Why were they circling so long over the flak belt? Who was running this show?
As the 388th turned right to rejoin the 96th group, its low squadron lost yet another bomber. Sky Shy was alone in the second element after Silver Dollar went down. Mike Bowen had already lost one engine in the first fighter attacks, and was desperately trying to keep up with the rest of the planes.
With his top turret gunner dead and both waist gunners wounded, he planned to drop his bombs and then head for Switzerland. A flak shell suddenly exploded directly under their fuselage and knocked out his elevator controls. He ordered his crew to bail out.
A Ride in the Whirlwind
Stuttgart, Germany
303rd Bomb Group
Satan’s Workshop
Brigadier General Robert Travis
0949
It might have been his first combat command, but from General Travis’s steadiness in the cockpit, he might as easily have been taking his wife and children out in the family car for a Sunday drive.
Sitting in the copilot’s seat next to Major Lew Lyle in Satan’s Workshop , he had spent most of the mission making notes on the large clipboard that rested in his lap. As they approached Stuttgart, the thirtyseven-year-old general was poised to unleash the biggest bombing strike mounted by the First Bombardment Wing so far in the war.
Close behind Satan’s Workshop was the rest of the 303rd, packed snugly into the first combat box, along with the 384th in the low position and the 379th in the high. Behind them were six more bomb groups. Even with all the mission aborts, General Travis still had nearly 160 Fortresses to destroy the Bosch Works in Stuttgart. Eighty thousand pounds of high explosives dropped in the right place would level them.
So far, the mission had gone according to plan. After reaching German airspace, Major Lyle had briefly led the First Wing off its predesignated course to avoid a concentrated flak barrage, but the 303rd was still on schedule when it arrived at the initial point of the bomb run over Stuttgart.
From the copilot’s seat of Old Squaw in the second element of the 303rd’s high squadron, Lieutenant Bud Klint gazed out at the vista ahead of them. It was an unbroken carpet of white vapor, almost like newly fallen snow, stretching as far as he could see.
Tucked into the same lead combat box, Jimmy Armstrong glanced around at the other elements of the 384th, three, six, nine, all of them in good, tight formations. Being an element leader was proving to be tough on the twentyone-year-old’s nerves, but so far he was holding his own.
When First Lieutenant Norman Jacobsen, the navigator of Satan’s Workshop, reported on the intercom that they had reached the initial point of the bomb run, Major Lyle handed over control of the plane to the group’s lead bombardier, First Lieutenant Jack Fawcett.
Moments later, the bomb bay doors of Satan’s Workshop slid open. It was the signal for the other fifty-three Fortresses in the first combat box to open theirs as well. Ordinarily, it took no more than a minute or two before the first payload was released from the lead plane once they were on the bomb run.
Lieutenant Fawcett would release his bombs first. After the lead plane dropped its bombs, the rest of the bombardiers would drop theirs as each element of the staggered formations passed over the drop point. Once all the bombs were away, the train of Fortresses would turn together in the same tight formation and head for home.
Crouched over his Norden bombsight in the nose compartment of Satan’s Workshop, Jack Fawcett immediately confronted the same obstacle faced by Lieutenant Henry Dick.
Straining his eyes through the eyepiece at the stratus cloud cover below them, Fawcett was unable to acquire a fix on the Bosch Works. Finally, he reported on the intercom that Stuttgart was totally obscured.
General Travis pondered the problem. It was the most important command decision he had ever made. Should he continue trying to find the primary target or move on to hit one of the secondary targets?
This was his first chance to prove himself in the air. He knew that Hap Arnold was back in London waiting for the results of the mission. The First Wing had been ordered to attack the Bosch Works because of its strategic importance, and they had come a long way to do it. According to intelligence estimates, the factories down there were producing 90 percent of Germany’s magnetos and fuel injection nozzles.
Cloud fronts often broke up pretty quickly. If they circled over the target and made another bomb run, his bombardier would hopefully be able to make a visual observation of Stuttgart’s prominent topographical features in order to lock onto the primary target.
“We’re going around again,” he told Major Lyle.
Flak bursts began erupting around the formation as Major Lyle put Satan’s Workshop into a big sweeping turn to the left. It was a simple maneuver for him to swing the Fortress around in a full circle. It was no easy task, however, for the long train of bombers in their tightly constructed combat boxes to stay in formation behind him.
Satan’s Workshop quickly became the hub of a gigantic wheel.
The pilots of the Fortresses on the outer rim of the wheel faced the biggest challenge. They had to dramatically increase speed in order to keep up in the tightly packed formation. For the pilots on the inner rim of the wheel, it meant slowing down to almost stall speed in order to stay in place.
As the long bomber stream began circling over the Stuttgart flak batteries, the bomb bay doors of Satan’s Workshop remained open. To the rest of the bombardiers, this indicated that a bomb release might be imminent. They waited with their fingers on the toggle switches to drop their own payloads right after the lead bombardier.
If a pilot on the outer rim of the wheel wanted to save fuel by attempting to swing in closer to the hub, it meant coming under the open bomb bay doors of General Travis and the rest of the 303rd, and no one knew when Lieutenant Fawcett would drop his payload. They all stayed out on the rim.
It reminded Jimmy Armstrong of the child’s game he had once played called crack the whip, in which the kids would hold hands and the leader would tear around in a circle, forcing the children at the end of the tail to run faster and faster until they fell away.
Yankee Raider was on the outer rim of the combat box and Jimmy had shoved the throttles forward to almost takeoff speed in order to stay in his element leader position. It was not only putting a big strain on the engines but draining gas at the fastest rate possible.
In the waist compartment of Yankee Raider, Reb Grant stared out at the little patch of sky he could see through the fuselage as he searched for enemy fighters. To Reb, it was obvious
that the German 88s were beginning to find their range.
The flak explosions were getting thicker all the time, and the plane was bucking wildly. At least there weren’t any enemy fighters around. He assumed they were waiting out there beyond the flak belt like a pack of coyotes to wade in on the stragglers when the barrage ended.
Bob Travis remained calm and unruffled as Satan’s Workshop was repeatedly rocked upward by the concussion of the flak bursts. He had been monitoring the fuel situation. With its new Tokyo tanks, their plane could fly another thousand miles if necessary.
After finally completing his 360-degree turn, Major Lyle came in for their second run on the target. Once more, he turned over control of the plane to Lieutenant Fawcett, who again stared through the telescope of his bombsight, desperately looking for the identifying features he had memorized from the photographs at the predawn briefing back in Molesworth.
It was unbelievably maddening. Aside from a few tantalizing hints of ground objects, the swirling cloud cover made it impossible to get his bearings. He stayed on the bombsight until he realized they must have passed over the target again, and then reported the bad news to Major Lyle and General Travis.
Bob Travis thought over his next decision. If anything, his determination to succeed had only grown stronger. He had been ordered to destroy the Bosch Magneto Works. That was what he planned to do.
“We’ll go around again,” he told Major Lyle.
Bud Klint watched Satan’s Workshop bank into another broad sweeping turn to the left. In all his combat missions, he had never seen anything like this before. They were going around again with all their bomb bay doors open. It made absolutely no sense to him.
Bud continued to glance at Old Squaw’s fuel gauges. They were below the halfway mark, and at the bomber’s accelerated rate of speed, he could almost visualize the fuel draining down the tanks. He wondered if General Travis knew how bad the gas situation was for the older-model B-17s.
Jimmy Armstrong had never met General Travis, and he had no idea what was going on. All he could do was try to keep the Yankee Raider locked into the increasingly ragged formation within the first combat box. As they banked around to the left a second time, Jimmy Armstrong turned to Rocky Stoner and growled, “When are we going to quit flying these cloverleafs?”
How long can this old crate take the strain? Jimmy wondered, keeping his eyes glued on the squadron leader’s plane ahead and above him in the formation. How long can I take the strain?
Flying on only three engines in Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti, Andy Andrews had fallen farther and farther back in the bomber train. After dropping out of the 306th group, he had temporarily joined the next one, and then the next, while Keith Rich, his copilot, continued to give him ominous reports on their fuel situation.
Something had definitely gone wrong up ahead. He repeatedly checked their compass while they completed the three-sixty. No one was talking about it on the radio. It was like they had been sucked into a giant maelstrom, aimlessly circling in this huge mass of orbiting planes over southern Germany.
Andy had been running the three remaining engines on full manifold pressure and maximum rpms to try to keep up with their full payload of two and a half tons of bombs, burning fuel by the minute.
Flak bursts were erupting all around them as Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti drifted back toward the last group in the long train. Off to the left, a bomber suddenly burst into flames. Fire quickly engulfed the cockpit. He could see the copilot open the side window, as if he was planning to crawl out of the blazing mass. A moment later, he was hidden by the flames.
Andy thought of his favorite passage from the “Choric Song” of The Lotos-Eaters: “All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave ... ripen, fall, and cease. Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.” It wasn’t much comfort.
He wondered which general was commanding this mission. Whoever it was, he was an idiot. Andy wasn’t thrilled with generals anyway. On a previous mission, he had been informed that an infantry general wanted to go along as a passenger on one of the bombers to find out what it was like. The group commander had chosen Andy to give him the ride.
Fortunately, it was one of the uneventful missions, with light flak and few enemy fighters. After they landed back at Thurleigh, the infantry general had congratulated Andy on a successful mission. Later, the general had been awarded the Silver Star for flying it with them.
Screw the generals.
From the waist compartment of Yankee Raider, Reb Grant continued to scan the small patch of sky outside his port for enemy fighters. The flak seemed thicker than ever, and he noticed that what had once been a tight formation of bombers was now spread out across the sky.
The carefully constructed combat box formations were rapidly dissolving all along the length of the train as the elements, squadrons, and groups struggled to stay together.
Flak explosions continued to rock Satan’s Workshop as Major Lyle concluded his second 360-degree turn. In the copilot’s seat, General Travis seemed imperturbable. When they again reached the beginning of the bomb run, Major Lyle turned over control of the bomber to Lieutenant Fawcett for the third time.
Staring into his eyepiece, Jack Fawcett couldn’t believe it. If anything, the cloud cover was thicker than before. He continued to try to acquire the target until he was sure they had again passed over the Bosch Works, and then reported the news.
This time there was little hesitation on General Travis’s part. No one would ever accuse him of lack of determination.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it again.”
Major Lyle swung Satan’s Workshop into another banking turn to the left. The planes coming behind turned to follow him, all of them with their bomb bay doors still open.
Now that the flak batteries around Stuttgart appeared to be zoned in on the formation, Major Lyle began to take some evasive action. He put the bomber into a steep dive.
Bud Klint watched in amazement as Satan’s Workshop headed down. All the planes in the combat box attempted to follow it as the lead Fortress dropped several hundred feet before leveling off.
Close behind Old Squaw in the last position of the high squadron, Lieutenant David Shelhamer was piloting S for Sugar. On the Schweinfurt mission, he had led an element of coffin corner. This fiasco was even more horrendous, he thought. They had circled three times with their bomb bay doors open, and were now being forced to do acrobatics over the target.
After making a turn to the left, Satan’s Workshop banked into an extreme turn to the right. Shelhamer couldn’t see into the lead cockpit, but he was certain that General Travis had to be flying the plane. Major Lyle had never done anything like this before. How the hell could they all follow him through extreme evasion tactics and still stay in the combat box?
Shelhamer had seen enough. They had now been over the target nearly thirty minutes. He ordered his bombardier to make certain there were no B-17s below them and to then salvo their payload of ten five-hundred-pound bombs. The bombs went out a few moments later, and the plane was suddenly much easier to handle. No one knew where the bombs had gone.
When Satan’s Workshop began its fourth bomb run, Lieutenant Fawcett again took control of the plane and crouched over his bombsight. Through the dense mist, he thought he could see several oil tanks. He was turning the bomber onto a heading that would take them over the tanks when for some reason Major Lyle retook control of the plane.
Lieutenant Fawcett immediately turned on his cushioned bombardier’s stool to flip off the rack switches that would prevent an accidental release of their bomb load. Unfortunately, he had left the bombsight switch on. Before he could reach the rack switches, the bombsight toggled the bomb release, and his bombs began to fall.
It was the signal that the rest of the bombardiers had been waiting for after flying thirty minutes with their bomb bay doors open. Most of the planes following Satan’s Workshop dropped at the same point.
Lieutenant
Fawcett was disconsolate. Sergeant Nordyke, the radio operator, had been looking through the open bomb bay after the release, and Fawcett asked him if he had seen where they went. Sergeant Nordyke couldn’t be sure, but he said it looked like a town of some kind.
In Old Squaw, Bud Klint was watching a straggler trying to keep up on the outer edge of the circling formation. They had gone around so many times that many of the groups were now mixed up together. There was a sudden yellow burst of fire underneath the straggler as an 88 exploded. It began spiraling downward.
“Fortress going,” someone called out on the intercom.
In one of his mission briefings, Bud and the other flight officers had been assured that just one flak burst in a thousand ever hit a Fortress, and that with the odds so greatly in their favor, it made no sense to take evasive action. It also made no sense that they would be required to circle so many times over a concentrated flak belt.
Bud found himself silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer: “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .”
Then it was Old Squaw’s turn. Bud never heard the burst that hit them, but shrapnel ripped through the right wing and severed a fuel line to the right inboard engine. From the copilot’s window, he could see precious gas seeping out along the lower edge of the wing.
In Yankee Raider, Jimmy Armstrong watched the planes ahead of him dropping their bombs, and ordered Wilbert Yee to get rid of theirs. He no longer cared if the bombs landed on the Bosch Works. At least they would fall on enemy territory, and then they could head for home.
What remained of the 384th’s formation turned onto a northwesterly bearing toward France. They still had six hundred miles to go to reach their base at Grafton Underwood.
A few minutes later, the right inboard engine on Yankee Raider began to falter. Jimmy knew right away what had happened. With all the strain on it, the engine’s supercharger had frozen up. He had no alternative but to throttle back. Down to three engines, he began losing ground to the rest of the group. His first opportunity to fly as an element leader had come to an end.
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